23 March: Near Miss Day - Asteroids

Near Miss Day Commemorates the day a huge Asteroid nearly missed hitting the earth.

1. An asteroid is defined as a small body orbiting the Sun which is composed primarily of rock or metal. The word asteroid was coined by the astronomer William Herschel in 1802, and means “star shaped.”
2. There are currently over 600,000 known asteroids in our solar system, and according to scientists, millions we don't know about. Yet. Most of them are located in the Asteroid Belt, between Mars and Jupiter.
3. The first asteroid to be discovered is also the largest - Ceres - discovered by Giuseppe Piazzi in 1801 and named after the Roman goddess of the harvest. Ceres is also the largest known asteroid at 933 kilometres (580 miles) across. On the other end of the scale, the smallest asteroid that we know of so far, at time of writing, is 6-foot-wide (2 meters) and has the designation 2015 TC25. It was observed when it made a close flyby of Earth in October 2015.
4. Only about 200 asteroids exceed 100 km in diameter. According to theory, asteroids are what is left of a planet which failed to form, prevented from forming by Jupiter's gravity. If all the solar system's asteroids ever did join together and form a planet, that planet would be smaller than Earth's Moon.
5. The average temperature of the surface of a typical asteroid is minus 100 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 73 degrees Celsius). The surface of most asteroids is thought to be covered in dust. Most asteroids are irregular in shape because they are too small to exert enough gravitational pull to become spherical.
6. About 75% of asteroids are Grey in colour and are probably made of clay and stony silicate rocks. 17% appear reddish or greenish, and are probably made of silicate materials and nickel-iron. The vast majority of the rest are Red and probably made of nickle-iron. There are other, very rare types, like the asteroid Vesta, which has a basaltic, volcanic crust.
7. The potentially dangerous asteroids are the ones which intersect with the Earth's orbit. These are known as Apollo objects. Occasionally, one may do what is deemed a close flyby of the Earth - though everything is relative. In September 2017, the near-Earth asteroid 3122 Florence passed Earth at 4.4 million miles (7 million km), or 18 times the distance to the moon. There are no known asteroids likely to pose a threat for quite some time. Only asteroids bigger than a quarter of a mile are capable of causing global disaster like the one that wiped out the Dinosaurs. Much smaller asteroids, or pieces of them, fall to Earth all the time. Around once a year there will be one which is as big as a car - but they usually burn up in the atmosphere. They cause bright fireball effects in the sky which someone will inevitably post on Youtube but no serious damage.
8. It could be thanks to asteroids that any of us are here at all. Scientists believe asteroid and comet collisions may have delivered the water-ice and other carbon-based molecules to Earth so life could evolve. Later collisions shaped which species evolved and which were wiped out.
9. Asteroids can have moons, just like planets do, and even ring systems. Others are binary systems, with two asteroids orbiting each other. Some have tails - there is an asteroid out there with six tails. The ones which pass close to Earth can be studied extensively. We now know that Florence, for example, has at least one big crater and two moons. (I don't know if the moons have been named but my suggestions would be Zebedee and Dylan. Apologies to those who don't get the 1960s UK cultural reference!)
10. Which brings us to asteroid names. At first, when they were thought to be planets, they had to be named after figures from mythology but the rules have changed several times and you can name an asteroid after virtually anything. There are asteroids named after celebrities, scientists, cities, rivers, mountains, organisations, even fictional characters like Star Trek's Mr Spock. There are seven asteroids named for the crew of the Space Shuttle Columbia who were killed in 2003. The only thing the naming authority has ruled out is naming an asteroid after your pet. The strangest asteroid name I've come across is 18923 Jennifersass. One wonders if Jennifer was flattered or furious that someone thought she had a bum the size of a small planet! If you want to browse the meanings of the names given to asteroids, you can find many of them at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meanings_of_minor_planet_names#Meanings_from_100,001_to_200,000 (though Jennifersass, sadly, wasn't listed).

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